Yes, there is. There is always a Christian position to any issue in life. It begins with us on our knees and our hearts in prayer. From that we stand in the sheer confidence in a Father who knows all things. And from that we must necessarily move on to a posture of grace, humility and love. Any other position is impermissible to Christians.
This is not, of course, what many of you would expect when you read the lecture title from the outline on the left. But whatever else we may say about evolution, we need to be reminded of this fundament Christian attitude in life. When one surveys the debate on evolution that has taken place among Christians, one often finds very unkind acts of denying other Christians from the halls of faith simply for believing, say, in evolution. This should never have happened. However passionately we hold onto our view, we must always treat those who differ from us with respect and grace. This respect and grace can, in some circumstances, mean a sharp rebuke. It should never take us to the point where we deny our opponent their position in the family of God.
Evolution is not a central tenet of our Christian faith. It is, first and foremost, an intellectual struggle to make sense of the bio-geological evidence we find in nature. The body of evidence is vast, and getting swiftly larger still. How we make sense of them depends on how deeply and broadly acquainted we are with that evidence and the questions being asked about them. In the history of the debate, every opinion and hypothesis has been challenged and many now made obselete. Only a person who is not familiar with that vast body of evidence, and keeping up with its growing mass, or an incurably stubborn person, would dare say that his or her view of evolution is definitive. It is difficult to think of another subject where the only meaningful position we can take is to say, "Where I am now, this is what I think."
If the task of making sense of all these bio-geological data is difficult and complex, it is doubly so for the Christian. She has not just one body of data t contend with but two. She also has to make sense of her Scriptures and hammer out a sound theology before she can begin to understand the relationship between evolution and the Christian faith. The 'she' in the above sentence, however, also includes the Christian Church, and therefore, the Christain Faith, as a whole.